ABOUT
Anna Johnson (she/they) lives and works in East London and is currently both teaching and studying for a PhD in Creative Writing, at Kingston University.
Anna holds a first class BA(hons) in History and Theory of Art from the University of Kent and an MA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins.
Contact: annaotheranna@gmail.com
My practice
In February 2016 I began to write about my experience of early motherhood; an experience of such unexpected, powerful, immersive strangeness that I needed to find some way of placing it at a little distance, of beginning to analyse it or maybe just trace it, through writing. This writing has grown into a full-blown life writing practice, centred on a recurring connection between my experience of motherhood and ideas of haunting, of presence and absence and repetition (daily and generational). This practice makes up the creative-writing side of my PhD.
The critical element of my PhD looks at how, through theories of the spectral, intersectionality, queerness, feminism, disability, failure and anecdote, amongst others, we might aspire to transform and re-possess language in an attempt to express the ineffable. After all, ghosts are one of our oldest and most familiar ways of speaking the unspeakable. There is failure inherent in this project, but I hope a valuable, generative kind of failure.
My work is also reflective of a complex intersectionality that I embrace as fundamental to life writing, and as such it encompasses issues including neurodiversity and chronic illness. I have published chapters on both these issues (see publications below).
Recent publications and events:
2023: Creativity and Motherhood in Lockdown: An Ongoing Conversation, zine, co-authored with Lina Hakim, presented at the CAMC Conference, Coventry University
2022: Failure: the Ghost and the Mother, Alluvium Journal, Special Edition 10.1
2021: Failure: the Ghost and the Mother, talk at BACLS-WHN 2021 Virtual Conference
2021: An Intersection of Motherhood and Chronic Illness, chapter in From Band-Aids to Scalpels: Motherhood Experiences in/of Medicine, Demeter Press
2021: Cascading Transitions: Becoming a Writer and Engaging with Neurodiversity in Response to Motherhood, chapter in Women in Transition: Crossing Boundaries, Crossing Borders, Routledge
2021: Race/Gender Matters Research Group Event I curated: ‘Failure and Care’ with Lisa Baraitser, Kingston
2020: I so wanted to ask you… video piece, Writers’ Centre Kingston
2019: Illness/Parenting/Writing, performance, Writers’ Centre Kingston
2019: The Role of ‘Place’ in My Creative Life-Writing Practice, talk, Genos/Matter/Theory Conference, Kingston
2018: Cascading Transitions: Becoming a Writer and Engaging with Neurodiversity in Response to Motherhood, talk at Women in Transition Conference, Kings and Oxford
2018: Objects of a Maternal Haunting, chapter in Everyday World-Making: Towards an Understanding of Affect and Mothering, Demeter Press